


Tell Me How I'm Meant to Breathe

by CordeliaRose



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria Safe-Zone, F/M, Gleggie - Freeform, Glenn-centric, glenn needs love, protect glenn 2k16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 05:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7210778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CordeliaRose/pseuds/CordeliaRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glenn is depressed and won't get out of bed. Team Family steps in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me How I'm Meant to Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> I am badly in need of a fic where Glenn finally lets himself feel all the shit he’s gone through (BECAUSE LET’S FACE IT IT’S PRETTY MUCH MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE) and team family steps in to help because ever since like season 3 we haven’t seen that and let’s be honest Glenn needs protecting from the horrors of the world

Maggie woke up feeling oddly cold and out of place. It took her a minute to realise that it was because Glenn wasn’t holding her like usual, but was flopped on his side of the bed, face buried in the pillow. She wondered whether he was asleep but his limbs were tucked to his sides rather than sprawled out like they did when he was knocked out.

“Glenn?” she whispered, shuffling closer to her husband and resting her head on his back. “Time to get up.” Usually he was the one harassing her to get up on time, and a quick glance at the clock told her that they were already half an hour later than usual.

There was a muffled noise from his side of the bed that didn’t really seem to be a word, but he didn’t lift his head from the pillow. Instead he pushed it further into the material like he was trying to hibernate.

“Come on, we need to get up,” she said again, firmer this time, and sat up in bed, stretching.

Again, Glenn didn’t say anything, but this time the noise he made was definitely negative, and sounded worryingly like a whimper.

“Come on, Glenn.” She swung her legs over the lump of his body underneath the covers to straddle his back. “We can try that new sex position we saw in the magazine.”

Glenn just sighed and shook his head. Well, if sex couldn’t motivate him, then something was horribly wrong. He had worn an old shirt to bed last night; it was baggy and slightly off-white, and it was easy to slide her hands underneath the hem and stroke his warm skin.

“I’ll blow you.” Nothing. “I’ll blow you twice. Three times.” Still nothing. “I’ll…fuck, Glenn, I just offered to suck your dick three times in one day. I don’t know how else to motivate you.”

She rolled out of bed and went to brush her teeth, hoping that when she came back he would have moved. No such luck.

“What’s up?” she murmured. “Talk to me.”

He lifted his head just enough to reply, “Don’t want to get up,” then fell back and refused to talk to her again. Maggie tried everything she could think of to get him to talk, even resorting to touching herself and making the most obscene noises she could manage, which usually drove Glenn so crazy that he couldn’t keep his hands off her. Today he didn’t even move, just lay there. When she flopped down next to him, her mood gone from his lack of reaction, he slid his hand over her stomach and plucked the band of her panties questioningly. “Nah, I’m good,” she sighed, and he moved his hand back up to rest on her belly.

After another half hour of begging him to get up and receiving only the minimalist of actions, she dressed and headed downstairs to gather reinforcements. “I will get you out of bed,” she warned him before she left, eyebrows creasing together when he didn’t even look at her.

She tapped Tara on the shoulder when she found her in the dining room, responding to her inquisitive glance with a tilt of her head towards the empty living room. She wanted some privacy to talk about this in case she did something embarrassing like crying. She felt a lot like crying, which was unusual for her. She hadn’t cried since the Governor.

“Glenn won’t get out of bed,” she blurted as soon as Tara closed the door behind them. “He won’t say why.”

The brunette pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail and frowned. “Is he ill?”

“Don’t think so. He…” Maggie hesitated. “I think it’s more mental. He just seems…distant and closed off. Not like Glenn.” Like she’d predicted, she felt tears threatening to spill over and blinked them back rapidly. Just because Tara wouldn’t make fun of her didn’t mean she had to let it happen.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Tara said gently, reaching out and running her hand over Maggie’s arm. “He might just be tired or something. I wouldn’t worry.”

Maggie nodded. The younger woman’s words made sense but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, more so than Glenn just being tired or a little under the weather. Still, she smiled at Tara as she headed for the stairs and went up to the small room she shared with Glenn.

* * *

“Maggie’s worried about you,” Tara began, sitting down next to Glenn’s prone body and laying a hand on his back.

There was a non-committal grunt.

“Why won’t you get up?” She waited for an answer and finally realised she wasn’t going to get one, and sighed. She patted his back and made to get up when he replied.

“Bad things happen,” he said quietly, lifting his head from the pillow just a little. “Whenever I get up, bad things happen.”

Tara sighed. “Oh, Glenn…” She readjusted herself and rubbed at his shoulders. “It’s the apocalypse, you know. Bad things are going to happen no matter what. It’s not because you get up.”

Glenn just shook his head, refusing to look at her. Knowing him well enough to know she wasn’t going to get anything else out of him, Tara stood up and walked to the bathroom to get a glass of water. She set it down on the small table next to the bed, telling Glenn to drink at some point please, and then left to tell Maggie what she’d found out.

It wasn’t pleasant, having to tell her that her husband had essentially become depressed in the space of eight hours, but there was some relief on Maggie’s face when she found out what the cause was. “Thanks,” she said softly. “At least now I know what’s wrong.”

* * *

Glenn’s absence was keenly noted at breakfast, but nobody asked Maggie about it as she ate. She kept her head down, pushing her food around before taking small bites that felt like they were clogging up her mouth, forcing herself to swallow.

Rick finally took one for the team and when they were clearing away the plates, pulled Maggie aside subtly and asked if she was alright and if Glenn was ill. Much to her disgust and embarrassment, she burst into tears, sliding down the wall of the kitchen and hugging her knees. “He’s given up,” she choked out before the others came running over to investigate.

After several minutes of Tara trying to calm her down without no success, and the others dithering in the background, Daryl huffed, “Oh hell,” and hoisted Maggie into his arms, carrying her into the living room and setting her down on one of the sofas, letting Tara and Carol comfort her while the others filed in and looked anywhere other than at her.

Tara explained the situation to the others, with Maggie intercepting at odd points to add in details, and when the farmer’s daughter finally got control over her emotions and looked up it nearly made her bury her head in Carol’s hug again. Nobody looked like they thought they could solve the issue; in fact, everyone just looked worried.

“It might just be a couple of days,” Carol suggested when nobody else broke the silence. “We’ve all had days when we’ve felt like the world is kind of crumbling around us, right?”

“But he’s always happy,” Maggie whispered, curling into herself. “That’s who Glenn is. He doesn’t give up.”

* * *

Daryl, despite his gruff exterior and total refusal to show affection to anyone other than Carol (and then only on a good day), was probably the most concerned about Glenn after Maggie. He was the first to ask about him when she appeared downstairs in the mornings and was permanently frowning while he went about his duties.

Everyone cared and was showing in their different ways. Tara was trying to keep Maggie busy and happy, telling jokes as they were on watch together or encouraging her to talk when they checked the ammunitions store. Michonne made it a habit to return to the house every hour and knock on Glenn’s door, reminding him to have a drink, and she was probably the only reason Glenn hadn’t dehydrated. Carl and Judy were making a card together (which, in truth, was just Carl holding Judy while she scribbled delightedly on a piece of A4 paper folded in half), while Rick perused Alexandria’s rather small library for any books about depression and counselling.

On the third morning, Maggie came down with the uneaten plate of dinner that she had taken up last night but Glenn had refused to eat, and smiled tiredly at Michonne when she took care of it for her. Daryl was sitting opposite Maggie at the table, biting at the skin around his thumb. He didn’t seem to have noticed the small trickle of blood that was trailing down his wrist until Maggie pointed it out. Carl, who was closest to the cabinet where they kept their medical supplies, jumped up and retrieved a small plaster for him.

The hunter allowed Carol to sort him out with a surprising lack of fuss, and then jumped up from the table and announced he was going to see Glenn. Or, rather, he was going to “get some shit sense into Korea before he wastes away,” which was Daryl’s way of saying he cared very deeply about Glenn. Maggie thanked him as he went upstairs, accepting Tara’s hand on her shoulder.

* * *

“What tha fuck do’ya think you’re doin’?” Daryl barked as soon as he stepped into Glenn’s room. Maggie had opened the window so there was a pleasant breeze in the room, but Glenn didn’t seem to be appreciating it. To be honest, it was one of the sadder things Daryl had ever seen. Glenn was just curled up like a puppy that had been kicked, and from experience he knew that this was more than a case of just feeling a little bad. He felt sorry for Glenn, something in his chest pulling at the sight of his brother so down, but he knew that if he allowed sympathy to get in the way then he wouldn’t get anything done.

Glenn hadn’t even moved in response to his words, harsh as they were. Daryl tried again, throwing himself into the chair that Maggie had set up by his bedside. He chose his words carefully, knowing only the most eloquent of speeches would make Glenn better.

“Stupid fuckin’ Chinaman.” That was a good start. When Glenn didn’t rise to the bait, flip him off and tell him for the millionth time that he was Korean, Daryl continued. “Y’know what you’re doin’ to Maggie? Ya killin’ her, tha’s what. She wants to help ya, God knows why, and you’re just mopin’ around in bed.”

Daryl was not good with words. He did not enjoy words. On the whole, he tried to avoid words and shoot things. This was not a fun experience for him, and maybe something in Glenn sensed that because he actually moved his head and titled it slightly to where Daryl was sitting.

“I can’t,” he whispered, and his voice sounded so broken that Daryl nearly hugged him. Nearly. Glenn may have been his brother, and he definitely loved him more than he ever did Merle, but hugs were only reserved for very special occasions. Couldn’t just be giving them out now like free samples. “I can’t…get up, and see my family get hurt. I can’t do it anymore.”

Daryl frowned. He knew exactly how Glenn was feeling. He felt it himself. Had felt it so acutely when Beth was shot, when Sophia stumbled out of Hershel’s barn, when Glenn was so close to being killed at Terminus by those shitheads. But this was Glenn; Maggie was right when she said that Glenn wasn’t Glenn without his stupid optimism, without those smiles that cheered everyone else up. This wasn’t Glenn.

“Look, Korea…” he began, then stopped. He really didn’t know what to say. He tried to think back to how he had dealt when he felt like the world was out to get him and him alone. Surrounded himself with his family, mostly, and reminded himself that they were the reason he wasn’t giving up. But Glenn had been visited by everyone; according to Carl, he hadn’t even shifted when Judith gurgled happily at him, so maybe that wasn’t going to work for him.

“Listen,” he began again, his voice gruff now. Glenn turned his head towards him again, showing he was listening. “You know why we survived this long? Not just you and me, all of us? We love you, Glenn. You’re…fuck, you’re so much more than family now. And your stupid hope for the world is why we haven’t lost ours, okay? So don’t you fucking dare give up now because then we’ll all give up and then where the fuck will we be? Fuck.” He scraped the chair back and stood abruptly, glaring at Glenn. Why did this stupid Asian make him upset? He was in his forties, had gone all those years without caring for a single person, and now a twenty-something Korean man – boy, really – had made him all mushy and shit. Ah, well. He had started being all fucking girly and shit now. Might as well go the full way. Before Daryl could second-guess himself, he jumped on top of Glenn and squeezed him in a weird embrace before punching his arm lightly and fleeing the room. He’d done his bit now. This was someone else’s problem now.

* * *

Rick watched as his family shuffled around the living room the following evening. Without Glenn, the atmosphere had gone down considerably. It wasn’t just that his lack of happiness had made everyone else sadder; the pure lack of him being there was just downright depressing. Even Judith was frowning at her picture book.

As leader, he should be doing something, but what could he do? Daryl had come storming down yesterday, swearing that he was fucking tired of Glenn’s shit, and was having no more to do with it, which meant that he had actually showed Glenn some emotion and had gotten nothing as a result. Judging by the way Maggie’s face crumpled when Daryl stomped out of the house, she had read in between the lines as well.

From what he could tell, Maggie spent her days trying to keep herself occupied, then would unsuccessfully try to get Glenn to eat something, and then curl herself around him and cry into his shoulder. According to a conversation he had overhead when Maggie was washing the dishes with Tara, that was pretty much the only time he ever reacted, shushing her gently and stroking her hair. It was typical that the only reason Glenn moved anymore was because Maggie was upset.

Looking around at everyone’s morose faces, he couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m gonna talk to Glenn,” he announced, pushing himself out of the chair and ruffling Judith’s fluffy patch of hair as he walked by her, eliciting a little chuckle that made everyone smile.

* * *

“Talk to me.” He said the words slowly, softly, settling down in the chair. “Just tell me why. I won’t make you do anything, I don’t expect anything. Just tell me why.” He didn’t think it would work, but almost instantly Glenn shifted and rolled over, one eye staring up at Rick. The other was hidden in the pillow, his face shielded by his greasy mess of hair.

“I can’t get up.” His voice was cracked, and Rick realised with a start that his eye was glassy with tears. He had never seen Glenn so distressed before. “When I get up, bad things happen, Rick. And I know they happen anyway, but when I get up I have to see them. I have to see my family dying. I have to see Maggie in danger, I have to see my entire world threatening to be ripped apart. I…can’t…do this anymore, I cannot wake up and face the world pretending that it’s not just an absolute piece of shit that is killing me from the inside out.” A single tear slipped from the visible eye and that seemed to be what made Rick reach forward and scoop the young man up into his arms, cradling him against his shoulder as he cried and actually let himself feel the horror of the new world for the first time.

This was not the Glenn that Rick knew. The Glenn that Rick knew called him a dumbass when he climbed into tanks and told him he was a glass half-full kind of guy when the odds seemed dire, and shouted at Daryl for trying to burn dead people and let himself be lowered into wells as walker bait and sometimes seemed to forget how to walk, following over his own feet. And he didn’t know how to make Glenn back into Glenn, so he just hugged him. He should have done this a long time ago, when the CDC went up in flames, when they lost the farm, when he came within a second of losing his life at Terminus, when he saw that the younger man was struggling to breathe with the weight of what he’d lost. Instead he’d just assumed that Glenn was strong enough to deal, that he never felt sadness, that he always smiled even when things were going bad because there was some good in the world. Maybe some of that was true, but not all of it. Nobody could cope with all the shit and horror that Glenn had gone through.

Rick was a cop. Daryl had a shitty upbringing. Carol was beaten regularly. They were all old enough to have experienced some of their own horrors and to have come to terms with them. Glenn was so like Carl in so many ways; they were both young, Glenn so young and innocent on the inside just like Rick’s son, the only difference being that Glenn had been alive a little longer than his son. It occurred to him that he never knew exactly how old Glenn was. Carl had just broached fifteen. It turned out, as Glenn informed him between gasping sobs, that Glenn was only seven years older.

“I should never have let this happen,” Rick mumbled, his arms wrapped around the slight man’s back. Glenn had been on the cusp of twenty when they’d met, and he’d never even thought to ask how old he was when he let the Asian go on dangerous supply runs or when he’d been kidnapped by those fake gangsters. They had all failed Glenn in some way, except for maybe Maggie, because she was the only one out of all of them who took the time to actually talk with Glenn about things other than survival recently.

Glenn’s current depression was on all of them, and fuck if that didn’t make Rick feel like an absolute monster.

* * *

When Glenn had calmed down enough to speak coherently he wiped his face and wiggled out of Rick’s grip. At some point Rick had begun crying as well, and he hurriedly cleared the moisture than his face. “I’m sorry, Glenn,” he said when it was evident that Glenn had no idea what to do now, perched on the end of the bed, staring at the floor.

At that his head jerked up, and he gazed at Rick curiously. The outline of his almond eyes were stained red and his bottom lip was bleeding, the small laceration in the shape of a tooth. “You don’t need to be sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I do. I should have just gotten on with stuff rather than moping around in bed.” He waved a hand towards the crumpled sheets dismissively.

“No,” Rick said, sharper than he was intending. “No, Glenn. We shouldn’t have taken you for granted like that. We’ve always just assumed that you were happy. We shouldn’t have done. You’re human like us.”

Glenn shrugged modestly. “Yeah, I guess. I find it easier to get on with stuff though. Always have. Apocalypse hasn’t changed that much. Just…got a bit too much suddenly, that’s all. You know, two years of people dying. All caught up with me suddenly. No big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” Rick said softly. “We’ve all had the point where we’ve broken down. All of us have; we should have realised that you were going to have it as well. Everyone has a breaking point.”

“I—”

“please, Glenn. Don’t argue. Just accept what I’m saying.” Rick’s eyes were pleading so Glenn nodded. “It doesn’t matter what’s caused it if you feel this bad. Come to us, talk to us. Take a break. God knows you deserve one, Glenn. You’re pretty much the only reason we’re all still alive. All those supply runs when we were at the quarry; you risked your life to save me when I was just a stranger in a tank surrounded by walkers. Most importantly, you stopped us all from losing out goddamn minds, Glenn. So don’t you dare say you’re okay when you’re clearly not. Just tell us and we’ll help you. You’re family.”

Glenn glanced up and smiled at him. “I’ll come to you next time,” he said softly. “I know I can. I thought it would go away by itself.”

“Never go through that alone, Glenn.” Rick stood up, clearing his throat. While not as emotionally incompetent as Daryl, he still had problems with too much talking. Maybe it was a testosterone thing? “I’ll go back down. Tell Maggie you’re up.”

“Thanks, Rick.” Glenn stayed at the side of the bed, one knee tucked up to his chest thoughtfully.

* * *

Maggie was so thankful that she gave Rick a kiss on his cheek, and then practically tackled a bemused Daryl in a hug before she bounded up the stairs. She found her husband in the shower, standing under a steady stream of water, his back turned to her. She spent a few moments admiring his ass before taking off her own clothes, making sure to make a lot of noise so he knew she was there, and then climbed into the shower behind him and grabbed the shampoo.

“Glad you’re feeling better,” she murmured as she squeezed a healthy amount from the bottle onto her palm and then placed the bottle back, starting to work the soap into Glenn’s hair. He tilted his head back silently, letting her work her magic, and then turned around to rinse it out under the hot water.

“Hey,” he said, leaning back to get the suds out.

“Hey.”

“Sorry about that. I…I couldn’t deal with stuff anymore. Should have come to you, though.”

“Yeah, you should have done.” Maggie stepped closer, resting her forehead against his wet chest. “Next time, you come to me.”

“Next time, I come to you,” Glenn repeated. He got the last of the soap out of his hair and kissed the top of her head. “I can’t lose you.”

Maggie let her eyes flutter close, and explored Glenn’s collarbone with her mouth. She had missed being able to be casually intimate with her husband. “We’re not going to lose each other,” she said slowly. “Because we’re good. We protect each other. It’s not going to happen.” She sensed a protest coming and kept going before Glenn could interrupt. “But even if it did, we would have to deal, okay? But you know something – it’s not a possibility. When it becomes a possibility then we consider it. But until then, why make ourselves miserable thinking about it?”

Glenn sighed. “I hate it when you make sense,” he grumbled, grabbing the bar of soap and beginning to wash her back.

“I always make sense. You saying you hate me?”

Glenn laughed, the bar of soap almost slipping from his hands as he stepped back reluctantly and began to move over the front of her body. “I love you, you know that.”

“May need a reminder tonight.” Maggie was sure her grin was positively lecherous at that moment in time.

Glenn just quirked an eyebrow. “That can be arranged.” They finished their shower in comfortable silence, and dried each other off carefully before heading downstairs to make dinner.

“You know, Daryl hugged me,” Glenn mused as she handed him a potato peeler. “Like, actually hugged me. I think he might actually have feelings.”

Maggie snorted. “When you wouldn’t come down he was like a moody teenager. Kept glaring at your chair whenever we ate. And when he went up to talk to you he went outside and beat the shit out of a tree.”

“Who won?”

“Wait ‘til you see the bruises on his knuckles. The tree, definitely.”

Glenn laughed, such a pure sound that she had been aching to hear for so long. Michonne tripped inside a few minutes later, looking pleasantly surprised to see Glenn. “Good to see you again,” she said nonchalantly, peering over their shoulders at the stew they were making. “Is that the squirrel Daryl got yesterday?”

“Yep, all seven of them,” Maggie agreed. She glanced at Glenn. “It wasn’t just the tree Daryl picked a fight with.”

Michonne snorted as she headed upstairs to get clean. “Hey, at least we can eat squirrel.”

* * *

Dinner was not as awkward as Glenn thought it would be, but it was bordering ever so slightly on weird as they all ate. Nobody wanted to talk about what had been going on over the past few days, but nobody seemed willing to talk about anything else, so there was silence with a few scattered compliments and the occasional squeal from Judith.

Finally, Rick broke the silence by clearing his throat. Everyone turned to look at him expectantly. “As a group, we’re not great at revealing our feelings,” he began, eyes automatically flickering to Glenn, as did everyone else’s. Maggie gave his hand a quick squeeze under the table. “We need to try and improve on that, so I thought that maybe we could…have a weekly meeting, where we sit down and talk about what’s happened.”

Daryl was the first to reply, and that was with a derisive snort. “Like hell you’re getting me in a fuckin’ feelings meeting,” he snapped, though his tone was betrayed by his eyes, which were turning the idea over thoughtfully.

“Does Judith have to come?” Carl queried, looking at his little sister, who was smearing her face with mashed potato. “I don’t think she understands feelings, Dad.”

“Judith has to come,” Rick said firmly. “We all do. We don’t all have to talk but it will do us all good and stop us from getting too down. Which has happened before. To all of us.” He added the last part hurriedly. “Any protests?”

Not even Daryl said anything that time.

* * *

Glenn didn’t go to the first meeting because he purposely took watch. Rick knew what he was doing but let him go. He attended all of the ones after that, though. He never said much, just sitting with Maggie while everyone kind of muttered about how they were feeling, but by the tenth week people seemed to have actually figured out how to talk openly and it became a lot less awkward.

His people had come forward for him, and Glenn did the same for them. They were all each other had now, and they were more than just friends.

They were family.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews etc. are love, people <3
> 
> You can also find me on [tumblr](http://asperger-girl.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
